The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(131)

Ah, those were happy times—who could deny it?—despite the numerous difficulties the couple came up against in their daily lives, in particular Jane, who faced a further obstacle to her adaptation to that new world: the sorry role women were relegated to in society. At first she could scarcely believe the things Dodgson told her, or what she saw with her own eyes, for she could never have imagined anything like it. For hundreds of years, the Observers on the Other Side had made no distinction between men’s and women’s minds. Naturally, the two sexes saw the world differently, but that didn’t imply superiority or inferiority. On this side, in contrast, the only thing expected of Jane was that she be the new biology professor’s charming wife, that she occasionally invite the other wives to tea at their rooms in Merton College, or, at the very most, that she organize a women’s reading circle. Understandably, at the outset Jane rebelled against inevitably being cast in an inferior role, convinced she would never be able to resign herself to it. She even went to speak in person to some of the deacons at the various colleges in an attempt to persuade them to let her join one of the science departments, if only as a simple assistant. However, after their initial shock at her unusual request, they fobbed her off with polite excuses. One of them, while accompanying her to the door with paternal concern, even remarked, “My dear girl, I understand that you feel lonely—it is common among women—but if you are so keen on science, perhaps you would like to draw pictures of animals?” And his words, which an indignant Jane later repeated to her husband and the young Dodgson, became their catchphrase: whenever Jane argued against one of Dodgson’s or Wells’s theories during the course of a golden afternoon, they would respond with a mocking smile: “My dear girl, perhaps you would like to go and draw pictures of animals?” But this was harmless banter, which always amused Jane, and the days they spent together seemed to be filled with their intermingled laughter. And yet, as summer wilts beneath the onset of autumn, so that radiant joy was doomed to fade.

Three years after the Wellses arrived in that world, Dodgson was ordained deacon. He had done everything in his power to delay that first step toward his inexorable future, which was none other than to become a priest a year later, given that ordination into the ranks of the Church was obligatory for any professor at Christ Church. Yet, in his heart of hearts, Dodgson considered himself a layman. Naturally, he believed in God, and even went to church twice on Sundays, but he wasn’t convinced that his God was the same silent deity who inhabited the cold, dark cathedral and whose fearful rage must be appeased by tedious, plaintive, never-ending rituals. His difference of opinion with Dean Liddell on that point fueled the reservations of Mrs. Liddell, who no longer approved of the burgeoning friendship between her three daughters and that strange professor and his eccentric friends, whose mysterious past accompanied them everywhere. Her pretexts for sabotaging their boating trips, which had become something of a tradition, grew more frequent and more blatant, and the helpless Dodgson realized how increasingly difficult it was for him to maintain his friendship with the three little girls, and in particular with Alice. Even so, he refused to believe that this could be the beginning of the end. And yet so it proved. The golden afternoons were almost over, and that summer of 1862 was to be the beautiful swan song of those happy times.

On the afternoon of July fourth, a rowing boat manned by a clergyman, a married couple, and three small girls glided down a tributary of the Thames on the way to the village of Godstow. The sky was such a glorious blue it seemed to color the whole world, the boat slid gently over the tremulous mirror of the water, while the landscape seemed to be slumbering, so intense was the stillness, disturbed only by the splash of oars and three childish voices imploring, in ever more imperious tones, “Tell us a story, Charles, please.” And when he considered it convenient, Dodgson, who had been pretending to be asleep simply to infuriate them, stretched his limbs slowly and decided to indulge them. Accompanied by the sleepy buzzing of insects, he started to tell them the story of a girl called Alice who fell down a rabbit hole, and ended up in a wonderful world where the only rule seemed to be if you can imagine it, then it could exist. “Is that one of your made-up stories, Charles?” Wells, who was rowing at the stern, inquired with a mischievous grin. “O-Of course, George. I am m-making it up as we go along,” Dodgson replied, winking at him. And all day long, as they made their way downstream, and in the meadow where they picnicked in the shade of a golden haystack, Dodgson held both the little girls and the Wellses spellbound with his tale. The couple would grin at each other whenever they recognized one of their own adventures through the filter of Dodgson’s imagination. Wells couldn’t have been provided with a better example of a man using his imagination without the need to inhale fairy dust. Yes, Dodgson’s imagination took wing with only a golden light and three enraptured girls to help him. Later on, when they headed back to drop the children off at the deacon’s residence, Alice, the real Alice, the ten-year-old girl for whom Dodgson had invented that tale, took his hand in hers, and, gazing with unusual solemnity into his eyes, she said, as if for the last time, “I would like you to write down Alice’s adventures for me, Charles.”

And if there was one man in the world incapable of refusing a little girl’s request, that man was Charles Dodgson. He stayed up all night consigning to the page the weird and wonderful images with which he had tried to hypnotize Alice that afternoon, as though hoping to capture her attention forever. A few days later, he went to deliver the fruits of his wakeful night to her: a bundle of folios covered in the black scrawls of his long, curvy handwriting and sprinkled with his own illustrations, but Mrs. Liddell was having none of it. She was so adamant that from then on his meetings with the girls became as fleeting as they were intense, and so tinged with guilt, that, when they were over, Dodgson invariably sank into a depression. Wells and Jane did their best to console him, assuring him that Alice would one day grow into a woman, and if they knew her as well as they thought, she wouldn’t give tuppence about her parents’ opinion. All he had to do was remain in Christ Church, close to the girl, and wait until she turned into the uncomplicated, passionate woman they knew she would become. He must wait. Wait until he could marry her.